Indeed.
replyNot only is search revenue growing, but it is growing at an accelerating rate.
At the same time, operating margins are expanding.
I don't know the name of the logical fallacy where someone personally uses an LLM instead of Google Search and then infers that the search business is dying, without ever reading a financial statement.
Indeed. Money over everything. It is absurd to complain about decreasing quality of a product that makes increasing money for increasingly rich people (thus, by definition, better).
replyIf business owners are paying for ads, then it doesn't matter a iota to Google or Facebook if real people use their services. It would be even better for them if real people didn't use their services, since that would save some costs. Business owners are going to keep paying for the ads, as long as they get some number about how many (bot) impressions their ad generated.
replyThere is probably a lag time before advertisers give up on AdSense.
replyA lot of corporate ad spend is already planned, and Google can adjust the costs up as much as they like. They hold the lever.
If search engine competitors were really eating Google's lunch then ad impressions would go down.
replyThey don't have much of an offering yet. OpenAI has some conventional ads, but everyone expects more involved advertising integrated into the conversation itself somehow.
replyEven if the alternatives would have no advertising the number of ad impressions of Google Search would go down.
replyIn the article it mentions the rise of other search competitors like Qwant implying they are causing Google to die as it bleeds market share to them.